Functional Neurogenesis

Studies of adult neurogenesis often begin with the following sentence: “Adult neurogenesis occurs in all mammals examined, including humans.” More detail-oriented papers might say, “Adult neurogenesis occurs in all mammals examined, including humans…but not bats.” Here, the similarities between bats and humans become more evident than one might expect: it could be an equally long time before we understand adult neurogenesis in either of these species. Bats are (relatively) easy enough to study experimentally, but how many studies will be required to understand why neurogenesis does not occur in the adult bat brain? With humans, we have the opposite problem: the one study in humans that used the unambiguous cell-birth marker, BrdU, found adult neurogenesis. The second study may never exist. Read the rest of this entry »